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I've been trying to install a 32 bit header to satisfy a dependency ridden package in 64 bit Kali Linux this evening, and I don't know the Linux C build system well enough to debug this issue. The file is cdefs.h. It is my understanding that cdefs.h only occurs in 32 bit Linux.

The build process dies because it can't find cdefs.h, so I go on trying to hunt it down.

root@kali:~# dpkg -S /usr/include/sys/cdefs.h

libc6-dev-i386: /usr/include/sys/cdefs.h

So dpkg believes that cdefs.h exists in libc6-dev-i836

root@kali:~# apt-get install libc6-dev-i386

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

libc6-dev-i386 is already the newest version.

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:

  lib32asan1 lib32atomic1 lib32cilkrts5 lib32gcc1 lib32gomp1 lib32itm1 lib32quadmath0 lib32stdc++6

  lib32ubsan0 libc6-amd64:i386 libltdl-dev xinit

Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.

1 not fully installed or removed.

After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Setting up libc6-amd64 (2.19-18+deb8u3) ...

Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-18+deb8u3) ...

Good to go right?

root@kali:~# locate cdefs.h

/usr/i686-w64-mingw32/include/sys/cdefs.h

/usr/include/bsd/sys/cdefs.h

/usr/share/mingw-w64/include/sys/cdefs.h

Oh no it's not there.

root@kali:~# ls /usr/include/sys/cdefs.h

/usr/include/sys/cdefs.h

This is a symlink.

root@kali:~# cd /usr/include/sys/

root@kali:/usr/include/sys# ls

acct.h      fcntl.h     klog.h         procfs.h    sendfile.h   swap.h       timex.h        utsname.h

auxv.h      file.h      mman.h         profil.h    shm.h        syscall.h    ttychars.h     vfs.h

bitypes.h   fsuid.h     mount.h        ptrace.h    signalfd.h   sysctl.h     ttydefaults.h  vlimit.h

cdefs.h     gmon.h      msg.h          queue.h     signal.h     sysinfo.h    types.h        vm86.h

debugreg.h  gmon_out.h  mtio.h         quota.h     socket.h     syslog.h     ucontext.h     vt.h

dir.h       inotify.h   param.h        raw.h       socketvar.h  sysmacros.h  uio.h          vtimes.h

elf.h       ioctl.h     pci.h          reboot.h    soundcard.h  termios.h    ultrasound.h   wait.h

epoll.h     io.h        perm.h         reg.h       statfs.h     timeb.h      un.h           xattr.h

errno.h     ipc.h       personality.h  resource.h  stat.h       time.h       unistd.h

eventfd.h   kdaemon.h   poll.h         select.h    statvfs.h    timerfd.h    user.h

fanotify.h  kd.h        prctl.h        sem.h       stropts.h    times.h      ustat.h

All symlinks.

root@kali:/usr/include/sys# ls -la

total 32

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 12288 Aug 23 21:18 .

drwxr-xr-x 76 root root 20480 Aug 23 21:34 ..

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    30 Feb 11  2016 acct.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/acct.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    30 Feb 11  2016 auxv.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/auxv.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Feb 11  2016 bitypes.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/bitypes.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 cdefs.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/cdefs.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    34 Feb 11  2016 debugreg.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/debugreg.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Feb 11  2016 dir.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/dir.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Feb 11  2016 elf.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/elf.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 epoll.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/epoll.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 errno.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/errno.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Feb 11  2016 eventfd.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/eventfd.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    34 Feb 11  2016 fanotify.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/fanotify.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 fcntl.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/fcntl.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    30 Feb 11  2016 file.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/file.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 fsuid.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/fsuid.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    30 Feb 11  2016 gmon.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/gmon.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    34 Feb 11  2016 gmon_out.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/gmon_out.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Feb 11  2016 inotify.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/inotify.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    31 Feb 11  2016 ioctl.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/ioctl.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    28 Feb 11  2016 io.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/io.h

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Feb 11  2016 ipc.h -> ../x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/ipc.h

Ah so I should just be able to check to where they point to make sure they are in good shape.

root@kali:/usr/include/sys# cd ../x86_64-linux-gnu/

root@kali:/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu# ls

gnu

Wait what. Where's the sys folder everything is pointing to?

root@kali:/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu# locate vfs.h

/usr/include/glib-2.0/gio/gvfs.h

/usr/src/linux-headers-4.0.0-kali1-common/include/linux/vfs.h

root@kali:/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu# locate cdefs.h

/usr/i686-w64-mingw32/include/sys/cdefs.h

/usr/include/bsd/sys/cdefs.h

/usr/share/mingw-w64/include/sys/cdefs.h

It's still not here. Am I missing something very dumb here?
Why aren't the files advertised by dkpg being installed?
What could be blocking them?
Where should they exist?
Why are the Windows are BSD versions of cdefs the only files around?

Answer based on comments:

The command long you have in your question shows apt-get, and then locate right after.

The way locate works is, it has it's own database for files in the file system. This database is updated with updatedb command, which is normally executed by cron, for example every night. So if you add (or remove) files, and want to use locate immediately after, you need to run updatedb (as root) yourself. After that locate will find your new files too.

This is rather useful to know for all programmers working on Linux, since needing to find files after installing something, or after doing a version control checkout, or just doing a build, is quite common, and using find is much slower than locate.